“I could.”
“Why don’t you tell me that ‘story for another time’?” he asked, slowing his steps as they got closer to the swimming pool, which was designed and built by the internees. “I don’t think I should go back to the hospital yet.”
“It’s not very exciting, but I suppose that’s welcome after what you saw today. I was just going to say that before Texas, we were interned somewhere quite beautiful.”
“You weren’t imprisoned?”
“Imprisoned?” she said laughing. “The entire Japanese diplomatic corps? If the American government treated the Japanese diplomats and their families badly, word would travel to Japan and the American diplomats over there would be treated badly in retaliation. There were no harsh conditions. After the bombing, we had to sleep at the embassy, on just mattress bottoms. The kind without tops. Does that make sense? There must be a better way to say it. Mattresses with just the springs,” she said, making a bouncing gesture with her hands.
“Box springs,” said Christian.
“That’s it. Spring boxes.”
“Box springs,” said Christian again, fighting a smile. “And after the box springs?” he asked as Emi frowned at her mistake.
“The box springs lasted a few days and then we were escorted out of the embassy by FBI agents. There were people on the sidewalk when we left, some taking our pictures, others yelling at us. Yellow this and that. You know the insults. But they would have been even more irate if they knew we were taking a train to Hot Springs, in Virginia, and staying at a nice hotel called the Homestead. It wasn’t bad at all. The food was good, and they let me go swimming and play the piano. After a few months there, we were transferred to the Greenbrier hotel in West Virginia. That was beautiful, too, and the last place I played the piano because I became very sick and couldn’t travel soon after.”
“Sick?” asked Christian. “What was wrong?”
“I contracted tuberculosis. I was very contagious, so they wouldn’t let me travel to Japan, not on a boat with so many important men. But my mother stayed with me. We are the only two associated with the embassy that are still here in the United States. They didn’t close all the consulates right away, but eventually, those people made it on board, too. The MS Gripsholm. A Swedish ship. That’s what they sailed on back to Japan.” Emi looked over at the pool, which was almost empty. She said she should hurry before it closed, but Christian didn’t want her to go yet.
“Were the diplomats angry that they had to live in hotels, cornered off, and then be shipped away?” he asked, more interested in the way her lips moved than the answer.
“I think most saw it as what had to be done,” she said. “We aren’t wanted in this country. We are the enemy. It isn’t a matter of Issei, Nisei—first-generation, second-generation Japanese-American. Almost none of us are American citizens. Some of the wives and children are foreign, but the men are employed by the Japanese government. It’s not safe for us here; we have to return. So now my mother and I are waiting for the next boat.”
“And until then you are here, volunteering at the hospital and going to the Japanese school,” said Christian.
“I’m not going to the school,” Emi replied. “I’m twenty-one. I haven’t been a student for quite some time.”
“But you must have gone to an English-speaking school recently. Your very proper English—despite your box springs—is perfect.”
“Since my English impresses you, do you want to hear my German?” she said, smiling modestly.
“Natürlich spreche ich auch Deutsch. Glaubst Du mir das nicht?”
“I certainly do believe that you speak German,” he said. “I believe you can do just about anything.”
“But let’s speak English here,” she said. “I don’t want everyone to know that I speak German. Then they’ll figure out that I’m eavesdropping on the German nurse’s aides at the hospital.”
“Kein Deutsch mehr,” said Christian, promising to keep her secret. “I’m not even going to ask why you speak German.”
“Good, then I can volunteer that story the next time we meet. Hopefully I’ll see you again before I’m sent back to Japan.”
“Do you know when that will be?” asked Christian, his heart already dropping at the thought.
“No, I don’t. But none of us know when we’re being repatriated. That’s one of the hardest parts of being here, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Almost all of us will be sent back,” said Emi. “You to Germany. The Italians to Italy. It’s not just me and my mother on the next Swedish boat.”
“Me to Germany?” echoed Christian. “Why would I go to Germany?”
She stared at him incredulously. “Why? Because that’s what happens. You’re being traded for Americans overseas. An American in Germany will come here, and you will go there. That’s why they are allowing families to be together here, because they’ve agreed to be repatriated. Didn’t your parents tell you?”
Christian stood there, staring at the beautiful Japanese girl with the British accent, in a starched white uniform holding a bag with a bathing suit and a towel. He was too shocked to say anything more.
“You should go back to your mother now. I’m sure she wants to see you,” Emi said after the silence between them had grown heavy.
“I should,” said Christian, backing away. After a quick goodbye, he ran back to the hospital thinking about Emi Kato. Her confident beauty. Her spring boxes. How she was going to look in her bathing suit. He had felt ashamed that she had taken his mind off his mother, off the dead baby, but he felt a little less bad now that he knew what his parents hadn’t told him. They were being sent to Germany.
When he reached his mother’s hospital room, he didn’t see the frozen eyes of the dead baby girl anymore, only Helene and her desperate grief. She gestured to him to come closer and when he sat down next to her, she put her hands on his head and cried about her baby, the man who had killed her, and the country that had made him. After holding the little girl’s limp body against her chest and feeling just her own heartbeat when there should have been two, Helene Lange had started to hate America.
CHAPTER 8
EMI KATO
MARCH–APRIL 1943
Keiko stopped in her tracks as she reached the front door of the little house in the D Section of the camp near the Karate Hall. “Is that my child?” she said looking at Emi sitting on the front steps, her long shorts folded just below her knees, her white shirt billowing out above them, almost two sizes too big. “It can’t be. My child doesn’t sit on the stoop. She goes directly inside and lies on her bed pretending she’s dead so that no one will socialize with her. So who, then, is this?”